"Early Buddhist schools" vs Mahayana ideas of them
Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2010 7:04 pm
The following msgs were split of from the Do you find Hinayana offensive? thread.
I did not see this when it was posted:
I did not see this when it was posted:
He or she may be knowledgable in the "non-Mahayana," but that does not mean that they are knowledgable in the Theravada.5heaps wrote:Do you have an example Tilt?tiltbillings wrote:when Mahayanists assume that their understandings of notions such as what a Buddha is, arahant, nibbana, bodhi are all appropriately applied without question to the Theravada.Paññāsikhara wrote: "Small vehicle" is no compliment, but they don't think that it is a nasty insult, either.
If we always think that when modern Anglophone Mahayanists use the word "hinayana" they mean it as "inferior / despicable vehicle", then we are probably misrepresenting them.
But misrepresentation seems par for the course in a lot of things in this area. :sigh:
For example, in general, the mahayana tenets are based on first understanding and mastering the non-mahayana tenets. It's literally impossible to have a mahayana realization without having non-mahayana realizations. So an implication is that any mahayana scholar is by definition very knowledgeable in non-mahayana. (/hides from retro)
Reginald Ray in his INDESTRUCTABLE TRUTH, pg 240 wrote: In fact, as we shall see presently, "Hinayana" refers to a critical but strictly limited set of views, practices, and results. The pre-Mahayana historical traditions such as the Theravada are far richer, more complex, and more profound than the definition of "Hinayana" would allow. ...The tern "Hinayana" is thus a stereotype that is useful in talking about a particular stage on the Tibetan Buddhist path, but it is really not appropriate to assume that the Tibetan definition of Hinayana identifies a venerable living tradition as the Theravada or any other historical school."